Other people use the Simple English Wikipedia because the basic language helps them understand hard ideas or topics they do not know about.

Many articles are shorter than the same articles in the English Wikipedia.[2] Technical subjects use some terms which are not simple. Editors try to explain these terms in a simple way. This makes Simple English articles a good way to understand difficult articles from the ordinary English Wikipedia. If someone cannot understand an idea in complex English, they can read the Simple English article.

When the Simple English Wikipedia began in 2003, the ordinary English Wikipedia already had 150,000 articles, and seven other Wikipedias in other languages had over 15,000 articles. Since the other Wikipedias already have so many articles, most Simple English articles take articles from other Wikipedias and make them simple; they are usually not new articles. Right now, the Simple English Wikipedia has 129,808 articles. As of October 2017, it was the 51st largest Wikipedia.[3]